National Geographic Special (and PNAS paper ??) on Firestone's Ideas

Dear Friends,I have been told that there will be a National Geographic Special on the National Geographic Channel about Firestone's Terminal Pleistocene impact and extinction ideas on Sunday, October 7, 2007.

"This map shows the Earth's physiographic features, thecurrent movements of its major tectonic plates, and thelocations of its volcanoes, earthquakes, and impact craters.Over 1,500 volcanoes active during the past 10,000 yearsare plotted on the map in four age categories. The locations( epicenters) of over 24,000 earthquakes, largely from 1960through 1990, are plotted in three magnitude categories andin two depth ranges. This PDF file includes 6 pages ofexplanatory and background information, a legend for themap in landscape mode, schematic cross section, and themap itself, which is 44 inches wide."

Looking at the picture, it look like whatever caused the “crater” landed in one of the intermountain basins, which are occupied by salt pans associated with the beds of salts lakes. The water-filled “crater” indicates that the lowest part of the lake bed, wherethe water table is close to the surface might have been struck. it is possible that when the crater” was created that enough hydrogen sulfide and other gases in the lake deposits were released to either make some people sick and nauseous. The dust generated fromsomething sediments full of various evaporite minerals might have been enough to make people feel not well. Because of the suddenness and sheer surprise of the event many, many other people might have became sick out of emotional hysteria and fearfulness after just a few people actually became physical ill.

Alternatively, people might have become ill simply out of shearemotional fear and hysteria. if for no other reason, given the nature of the event.

Each page provides the bibliographic data, an abstract, theability to export the citation as either EndNote or Bibtex,and, if a pdf or other digital version of it is available, a link towhere it can be either downloaded or the location of its depository.

For example, in case of the paper "The SNC meteorites: basaltic igneous processes on Mars (2006)" by P. H.Warren and J. C. Bridges, it indicates that a Pdf file of the article is available from http://oro.open.ac.uk/71/ ofThe Open University Library's e-prints Archive (United Kingdom).

Piece of Willamette Meteorite to be Auctioned

“Is there any known evidence that Willamette was knownby/important to Native Americans in the area pre-removal?Or was this a "hey, this'd bring tourist dollars, let's tryand get it" situation?”

Back in 2000, the Willamette Meteorite was the center of asignificant lawsuit in terms of how the Native American GravesRepatriation Act of 1990 would be interpreted. Being associatedwith archaeologists as an archaeological geologist at that time, Iheard all sorts of commentary about it during various informaldiscussions, which I overheard at meetings and work, between thearchaeologists and anthropologist, with whom I worked.

According to my imperfect recollections of these discussions, theConfederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde provided, as documented intheir Native American Graves Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) lawsuit, awell-documented oral history and some written historic records,which demonstrated that prior to 1855 that the Clackamas Indians,now part of the modern-day Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde,definitely regarded the Willamette Meteorite as being quite sacredand used it regularly as a focus of religious rites. They were forcedto abandoned the ownership of the land, on which it was located andthe meteorite along with the land as a resulted of being forciblyrelocated to new reservations in 1855. Given that it weights 15tons, it was impossible for them to bring it with them. After that,their beliefs regarding this meteorite were ignored and dismissed as“nonsense” from "superstitious Indians” since they had no legalclaim to it and lacked any political power. Later, in order to force them and many other Indian groups to “assimilate” into Americanculture, their legal standing as a recognized tribes were terminated in1954. It was only in 1983, that the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde were again legally recognized as even being Native Americans.Thus, for 29 years, they lacked any sort of legal standing to either complain about or pursue any claim against anyone in any fashionand were preoccupied with cultural survival.

It was only with the passage of NAGPRA, which includes sacredobjects and sites in addition to graves, that they had any legalbasis to assert any legal claim or control over the WillametteMeteorite. After 1990, it took several years of constitutionalchallenges and writing of enacting regulations and proceduresbefore, they and other Native American groups were allowed tofile lawsuits under NAGPRA. Thus, it not until 1999 that theyfinally filed a lawsuit under NAGPRA. Unfortunately, thedocumentation for all of their claims still lies largely buriedin the legal filings, which were made for their NAGPRA suit.

My guess would be that the consensus of the archaeologists andanthropologists, whom I knew, would be that the feelings of a typicalmember of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde towardsauctioning off this piece of the Willamette Meteorite would beequivalent what a Roman Catholic would feel if someone hadobtained possession of a large piece of artwork from the SistineChapel and was auctioning it off at either Southby's or Christie's.

First, it is revealing that this obituary is deafening in its silence about his Sandia Cave and other Paleo-Indian research. Like many obituaries, it can presents a sanitized version of a person’s life where unpleasant controversies are simply ignored as to avoid speaking unkindly of the deceased.

Finally, if Mr. Grondine reads what other people havewritten about Dr. Hibben, he will find that he is quitewrong about it being my “version” of Dr. Hibben as Iam simplying reporting what other people have written about him. For example, go see:

Regardless of whether Sandia Cave was a hoax or not, which is still an open question, it was so badly excavated and documented that the only people, who regard his work there and his Sandia Culture as having any validity are fringe archaeologists such the Hindu creationist, Dr.Micheal Cremo.

Piece of Willamette Meteorite to be Auctioned

“The rock, a 28-pound section of the Willamette Meteorite — the largest meteorite every discovered in America — will be offered at Bonhams on October 28, in what is being billed as the first-ever auction exclusively of meteorites.”

Saskatchewan Doorstop Turns Out to Be Meteorite

"It came from the far reaches of the solar system, but until recently it was a doorstop. It's a meteorite, only the 15th to be found in Saskatchewan, and it's now the subject of intense interest at the University of Regina.

The rock from space was discovered in 1999 in a field west of Davidson.”

New KT asteroid injection theory PART TWO

Just because I post URLs to some articles means nothing about whether I agree or disagree with them. In this case, they happened to be something about meteorites, which I correctly guessed wouldbe of interest to people. I do not know enough to have an informedopinion about is stated in them.

Maybe I should start adding a disclaimer to such postings that thecontent of the articles, to which I post URLs do not necessarily represent the opinion of the person posting them. :-) :-)

Oral tradition is certainly a source of information about possible prehistoric catastrophes as discussed in numerous publications.However, the lack of specific chronological information and theutter vagueness of them makes it possible to use any of them to support the catastrophe of choice for almost any point in time within the Late Pleistocene, Early Holocene, Middle Holocene, and Late Holocene. For example, Dr. Masse is using many of the same oral traditions and folklore that Mr. Grodine uses, as evidence of an 6807 BP impact in the Indian Ocean. For example go see Ancient Crash, Epic Wave, by Sandra Blakeseed in the November 14, 2006, New York Times at:

“Dr. Masse analyzed 175 flood myths from around the world, and tried to relate them to known and accurately dated natural events like solar eclipses and volcanic eruptions. Among other evidence, he said, 14 flood myths specifically mention a full solar eclipse, which could have been the one that occurred in May 2807 B.C.”

At least they have testable and credible physical evidence, i.e. the Fenambosy chevron in Madagascar, that something reallynasty might have happened as noted in “WAPMERR funded International Tsunami Expedition to Southern Madagascar - August 29 – September 13, 2006” at;

They are claiming that their crater is the “Deluge Crater”. The claims to have found either the “Deluge impact” or the source of Deluge stories are just as numerous as the number of claims of people having found Atlantis. :-) :-) Evidence of infinitely malleable nature of oral traditions and how they can be selectivelyinterpreted to “fit” theory of choice being advocated is seen in how various oral traditions are argued to be iron-clad proof ofmutually exclusive events, including anything from the catastrophic flooding of the Black Sea to a “Deluge” caused by either supernatural forces or divine intervention.

Dare to Add venture Fur Ther???

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